This article may be confusing or unclear to readers. In particular, the article is about a historic community that has become a neighborhood within the city Thousand Oaks but still includes an unincorporated area known as Casa Conejo. Article should retain community focus and not confuse readers with extraneous information drawn from nearby areas. Please help us clarify the article; suggestions may be found on the talk page.(October 2014)

The Conejo Valley was ranked as one of the top 100 places to live in the country by Money Magazine.[2] Also, it has the 11th highest per capita income and the 4th highest median household income in the nation (against all other cities with a population of 50,000 or more).

The community is served by the Thousand Oaks Library System with two libraries, the Grant R. Brimhall Library, the largest in the region, and the Newbury Park Branch Library. The ZIP Code is 91320, and the community is inside area code 805.

Contents

History[edit]

Hidden Valley

The area was inhabited by the Chumash beginning about 7,000 years ago. Newbury Park contains many ancient burial sites, most near the Santa Monica Mountains in the Southern portion of the community. Many artifacts have been discovered in the area.

Newbury Park is named after Egbert Starr Newbury, who owned thousands of acres of land in the Conejo Valley in the 1870s.[3] John Edwards,[4] Howard Mills,[5] and Egbert Starr Newbury[6] bought Rancho El Conejo land. Newbury and his wife Fannie moved to California from Michigan for health reasons in 1871. He became the first postmaster in the Conejo Valley in 1875. The post office was near their house which was located at the current location of the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. The historic Stagecoach Inn was used by travelers between Los Angeles in the south and Santa Barbara to the north as a stagecoach station.

Along with Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park was part of a master planned community by the Janss Investment Company. Most of Newbury Park, along with the parts of Westlake Village located in Ventura County, became part of the City of Thousand Oaks sometime between the 1960s and 1970s. The annexed area was formerly controlled by Ventura County, but after a community vote, all but Casa Conejo became part of Thousand Oaks.

Newbury Park has had an increasing population due to the presence of biotechnology firms and technology corporations of the area, such as Amgen (world headquarters), Baxter, as well as numerous other tech businesses.

Housing[edit]

The community contains two major new residential areas, Rancho Conejo Village (built on the site of the former Rancho Conejo Airport, where portions of the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World were filmed[7]) and Dos Vientos Ranch. Rancho Conejo Village is still being developed by S&S Homes, while the master planned community of Dos Vientos Ranch has approached build out. The first planned community in Newbury Park is census-designated place Casa Conejo, located in a roughly square-shaped unincorporated area, is the only remaining part of Newbury Park not governed by the City of Thousand Oaks.

Real estate prices in Newbury Park increased over 250% during the 1995–2005 ten-year period.[citation needed] Typical single-family house prices in the area and surrounding communities range from around $500,000 to $2.2 million in parts of the valley. Starting in 2006, real estate prices have started to drop due to the credit crunch affecting mortgage financing, and also reflecting the exuberant and irrational price run-up in the prior decade. As an example, a newer 2,380 sq ft (221 m2) house in the gated Rancho Conejo community that sold for $880,000 in the summer of 2005 at the peak of the housing boom, would have fetched no more than $790,000 in the summer of 2007, about $700,000 in mid-March 2008, $685,000 in January 2010, and about $665,000 in October 2010. Although sales activity and prices improved slightly in the spring and early summer of 2010 due to government incentives and tax credits, the downward trend has resumed, albeit at a slower pace, suggesting that prices may be reaching a stable level from which sustainable appreciation is feasible.[citation needed]

Demographics[edit]

The most recent figures indicate that only the community of Newbury Park, not including Thousand Oaks, has a median household income of $83,615.[8] For Newbury Park included with the rest of Thousand Oaks, as of 2005, according to the US Census Bureau, the median household income was $90,503, while median family income was $104,885.[9] According to Money Magazine, median family income as of 2006 was up to $97,372.[10]

Climate[edit]

The region has a mild, year-round Mediterranean Climate or Dry-Summer Subtropical zone climate, with warm, sunny, dry summers and cool, rainy winters. Vegetation is typical of Mediterranean environments, with chaparral and grasses on the hillsides and numerous western valley oaks. Its elevation ranges from about 500 to 900 feet (150 to 270 m) (excluding hills). The area has slightly cooler temperatures than the surrounding areas, as it receives cooler air from the ocean through various hill and mountain passes.

Timber School, now known as Conejo Valley High School, is the first of the existing schools, having been built in 1924 to replace the first one-room schoolhouse that was built in 1889. Recent additions to the school were made in the late 1940s and 1950s. Newbury Park Adventist Academy is the second of the existing schools in Newbury Park, founded in 1947.